Class Borders in the Anarchist Movement : AZ IMC

I’ve been hanging around the Anarchist movement here off and on for about 4 years. In my family we’ve been working class activists ever since the Great Depression. We’ve been involved in global environmental sustainability in various ways ever since global unsustainability was discovered in 1968.

I’ve heard some Anarchists wondering what to do about the fact that the Anarchist movement is supposed to be a people’s movement but it’s dominated by White people from middle class suburban backgrounds. Last weekend was the big Reclaiming the Commons teach-in, where people talked about class war and the radical opposition of borders. So let me tell you middle class people something about what it’s like to be a minority in the Anarchist movement. I’ve heard some other minorities saying these things lately too. I think the class division in the Anarchist movement is the biggest obstacle to its being an effective political force. And you can’t have much of a revolution without being an effective political force, can you?

Here's my story: I write science books for activists. Scientists have been rushing for 40 years to try to figure out what’s causing the environmental crisis and how to stop it. Meanwhile, people in Mexico and other countries keep paying the price for the United States’ exploitation of the Earth.

My book Planetary Biology and the Anti-Capitalist Revolution, which I gave my workshop on last weekend, is for people with access to college educations and libraries. In my book Zapatista University I show farmers how they can teach themselves the same things with things they can see happening on their farms, and I explain how scientists have figured out how those things interact with each other all over the world. If farmers, college students, and school teachers are all working together, so much the better. The scientists who are pioneering this field in universities in the United States are having to beg, steal, and borrow to fund their departments.

I have posted complete audio versions of both books on my website for free, as well as the complete text of Zapatista University and the half of Anti-Capitalism that deals with how the interaction between human psychology and the environment has led to the environmental crisis, and I also have both books for sale in print. My Spanish isn’t good enough to translate entire books, but there are plenty of people in the world who can do that, and they can copy my work right off my website for free.

The decentralization of effective decision making power depends on the decentralization of information. If information gets decentralized, informed decisions will get made. No one needs to organize that. The empire’s education infrastructure can get attacked worldwide 100% legally by anyone with a library card or the memory of working on a farm. Like Subcommandante Marcos said, when given the choice between strength or reason, choose reason, because strength can be built with reason, but reason can’t be built with strength. Revolutions are won with ideas, not with bullets.

The year I lived in Ecuador, walking around the city with my long hair and black beret made me a hero among most of the people I met just because it made me look like Che Guevara—and that was before the NAFTA. Now at the teach-in, several actual, real-life Mexican people thanked me for my work, including two who have been involved with the EZLN. That’s how we measure success where I come from, by doing whatever it goddamn takes to get the goddamn job done.

Now here’s where the radical class division starts getting in the way…

There are a lot of Anarchists out there who think that if working class people learn too much about science they’ll lose their magical powers. But if your political success depends on discouraging people who grew up in farming towns from exchanging ideas with other people who live in farming towns, whose side of the class struggle are you really on?

When you middle class people make your positive stereotypes of working class people, all you’ve done is to find one more way to prove that working class people just aren’t good enough. Most of us don’t live up to your middle class expectations if you get to know us, and then you only support the few who do. But we already live in a society where the people who control the resources only support the working class people who act in ways the wealthy people approve of, and you’re not changing that. Then you say that the rest of us have to figure out how to resist our oppressors on our own. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.

The few times I’ve come to Anarchist meetings to see if anyone wants to contribute some skills and resources that I don’t have access to, about the only thing I’ve ever gotten is middle class people disapproving of the way I talk and the things I talk about, middle class people using their highly developed customer service job social skills to make me look bad in front of all their middle class friends, middle class people turning the term “emotionally insensitive” into a synonym for “inferior person”, middle class people getting butt hurt when I claim to know some important things about life that you don’t, middle class people handing out magazines for everyone to read while they wait for me to finish talking, and middle class people pretending I don’t exist when I see them somewhere and say hello. No matter what I do or how hard I work, it’s never good enough for you people. Mexican immigrants thank me for it, but I never live up to your middle class stereotypes. If I’m working class, I’m not supposed to know much about science. If I’m middle or upper class and I know a lot about science, I must be evil—which is what a lot of Anarchists seem to think.

Well I’m not the one who said I want to have a middle class revolution. You’re the ones who said you wanted to have a working class revolution. If you middle class people are serious about developing a working class perspective, every single one of you could get up at 4:00 tomorrow morning, go to a day labor center, and get jobs doing construction labor or landscaping for the summer. So why don’t you? Did someone hold a gun to your head and tell you not to do that? Or do you think you’re too good for manual labor? Or did you just not think of that? Or do you “choose not to put yourself into that kind of environment”? Whatever you want to call it, you’re still not different enough from your parents that anyone from my town would see any difference. If you’re not serious about developing a working class perspective, having a working class revolution obviously isn’t your goal. So what is your goal? And why do you think real working class people haven’t noticed that?

It’s not our paychecks, it’s not our neighborhoods, it’s not our lack of education, it’s not our lack of possessions, it’s not the way we dress or the poetry we write or the music we make or our ritual drumming or our ways of thanking the Great Creator, although those are all part of it. It’s the fact that we live the lives we do, and you don’t live the lives we do. It’s the fact that we had the childhoods we had, and you had the childhoods you had. Over the course of our childhoods and our lives, we’ve learned many things that have been passed down to us from our ancestors over hundreds, or for some people thousands, of years. We think about ideas that you don’t because we face challenges to our lives, health, families, and livelihoods, that you’ll never be faced with. Now you’re trying to figure out how to be us by imitating the outward things you can see. And you think you have figured out how to be us because as far as you can tell, you have imitated everything we do. Then you impress all your middle class friends with how working class you supposedly are. Which is why a lot of real working class people think middle class refugee Anarchists are such posers.

I’ve been saving up my money for two years to try to get my publishing company started, but then last summer I had to spend half of it on medical bills after I got assaulted in my neighborhood one night by 5 Mexican gangers. I’m working at the highest-paying job I’ve ever been able to get with the education I was able to get, and now they’ve cut my work schedule back so far that I’m having to take money out of my savings account just to buy food. I was good enough back when they needed volunteers for the War on Terror to defend a bunch of bank managers, but now bank managers have decided I don’t deserve to have food to eat. If you want to imitate my life, you’re welcome to pay the same price for it I have. And if you aren’t willing to pay the price, don’t expect to impress me with your clothing style and your radical middle class philosophy. And I’ve heard a lot of Anarchist minorities saying that.

I don’t think Anarchist minorities want to prevent you from learning anything from us and force you to continue with the lifestyles you’re trying to leave behind. But if you’re rebelling against your parents and your suburbanite childhoods and everything else you hate by pretending you had the childhoods we did, you’re still just a bunch of rich White people who think you have the right to take something other people devoted lifetimes to developing.

If you want to get more working class people involved in the Anarchist movement, or get more working class perspective on what you’re doing, or whatever, why don’t you try making a fair trade with us? Our knowledge for your resources, education, privilidges, and whatever else you have. Instead of colonizing the most radical political movement in the world and turning it into some New-Age emotional self-exploration thing for middle class people. Instead of not getting education, working at low paying jobs, dressing like us, and insisting that proves you know as much about being working class as we do. Because obviously you don’t. Where I come from, turning down the chance to get an education and working at a low-paying job your whole life is called throwing your opportunities away. And why would we want to join a revolution full of people who think we owe them our respect for throwing their opportunities away?

What about radicalism itself? How much of the radical movement really produces ideas no one has ever thought of before? And how much of it only produces ideas that seem radical to middle class people but other people have already thought of? How much of it produces ideas that appeal to middle class Anarchists simply because the ideas are so radical? And how much of it is middle class Anarchists using their advantages in resources and communication skills to show off how radical they are?

At one point at the teach-in, a couple Mexican guys who were maybe 19 or 20 came up to my table and looked at my books. My author bio in the back of Zapatista University says simply, “Ezra Niesen is a working class scientific genius who’s sick and tired of working class people being oppressed.” It’s not included in the version I posted on my website. I put it in the book for all the academic scientists who keep trying to discourage anyone from reading my books because people who are good at science but didn’t graduate from their education system are a threat to their careers.

One of the Mexican guys saw that one sentence and his eyes opened wide. “Is that true?” he asked. Every word of it. He thanked me and shook my hand. As though he never imagined that someone with exceptional scientific abilities would ever want to be on his side.

Was that a radical opposition to borders? I doubt he’s going to set up a website for it. Nobody’s going to set up a list-serve about it. Nobody’s going to have meetings about it. Nobody gave it a fancy name. No Russian prince is going to write a book about it. Where I come from, that’s called neighbors helping each other out. Where I come from, nobody’s ever heard of Mutual Aid.

So how did this absence of radicality turn into the foundation for a radical political movement? Unless this idea that I take for granted has become completely alien to a lot of other people who are looking for radical political ideas. But does radicalizing mundane working class values make you a revolutionary? Or does it make you just another bunch of self-obsessed rich people?

Then there’s language borders. Middle class Anarchists love to talk about ways language is used as an implement of oppression. Here’s one I’ve never heard middle class Anarchists talk about: Can you talk to people in your native accent without them thinking you’re drunk? If you can, you have something I don’t. That’s hardly the biggest story minorities have ever told about being treated as if who they are just isn’t good enough. But it’s one more division that middle class Anarchists don’t realize they’re still supporting. You don’t look down on Native Americans, Africans, or Hispanics for the way they talk, because that would make you racists. Instead you assume that people who look different from you must have some magical knowledge that you don’t. They do indeed know things you don’t. But do you realize that your middle class idea of decolonizing people who aren’t White means colonizing the entire White race instead? Suddenly you’ve decided that the term White skin privilidge is supposed to be proof that everyone who’s White must be either sheltered rich people like your parents, or Confederate flag waving, monster truck driving racists. Ehf Awh caiyme t’ y’Ehnah’chist meetin’ tawkin’ loihk thes, wood yoo evah belieeve Awh rilly knoo whot th’ tehm envorinmintel sostainabilitie meens, aw’ wood yoo thihnk Awh mohst’ve heuh’d eht sohmwhe’e ehlse an’ nauhw Awh’m jost ripititin’ it t’ maek mawhself luahk sma’t? An’ hauw hahd wood yoo rilly lissen t’ whot Awh wos troyin’ t’ tehll yoo? Cood yoo evah intehnalauize th’ paussibilitie thet Awh mauight knauhw saumethin’ impauhtent abeouht eht thet yoo hedn’t thaught auf? D’ yoo haunestlie belieeve yoo cood evah leauhn enethin’ impauhtent abaouht Ehnah’chism frauhm Whauite peeople whou tawk loike thes?

Do you and I even speak the same language? I’m writing this article using English words, and you can read English well enough to read this article, but does that prove we speak the same language?

Do the words make the language? Or do the ideas that people attach to the words make the language? If we attach different ideas to the words, are we still speaking the same language? We might think we are because we’re using the same words, but are we really?

What if two people think of the same ideas but don’t use the same words? Do they not speak the same language? A farmer from the United States and a farmer from Mexico both know that their livelihoods revolve around doing whatever it takes to make their farmland produce food. They’ve each adapted that basic idea differently according to their different living conditions, but they could learn a lot from each other, if only they could recognize each other’s words. Does a farmer from the United States speak the same language as an insurance salesman from the United States? Or does the U.S. farmer speak the same language as the Mexican farmer, even though one speaks English and the other speaks Spanish?

Where I come from, when we talk about threatening things, we talk about them in threatening tones of voice. When we talk about loggers getting crushed to death under fallen trees and fishing boats being lost at sea and going down with all hands aboard and people seeing their friends step on landmines in Vietnam, how else should we talk about them? But now that our labor has made your middle class insulation from the world possible, the idea of workers getting killed has become completely abstract to you. When was the last time you got injured by a power tool? How many scars do you have on your hands? When was the last time you saw a coworker fall off a ladder? How many of your coworkers have you carried to the emergency room? If I come to your middle class meetings and talk about threatening things in a threatening tone of voice, all you can see is someone talking in a threatening tone of voice. And then you and all your middle class friends decide that’s inappropriate.

What if I grew up in a forest with no TV, and you were raised on TV commercials? If you were raised to be emotionally insecure and have a 30-second attention span, and I grew up learning how to make a life for myself with my own hands, with plenty of time to think about stuff and talk about stuff, whose language are we supposed to use then? If I don’t talk fast enough to hold your middle class attention, how is that different in practice from you ignoring me?

Are you ready to hear something really radically working class now? What if I said that the Anarchist movement has been taken over by faggots? I’m saying this as someone who grew up in a town where the economy revolves around manual labor. If you live in a house and eat food, your life is made possible by manual labor. If some limp-wristed girly boy thinks his emotional sensitivity makes it someone else’s responsibility to do the manual labor that makes his life possible, why would you want someone like that living in your town?

There are many reasons that many working class people hate homosexuals, and I’m not here to defend those. I’m just pointing out one that I’ve never heard middle class Anarchists talk about. If you think you’re too good for manual labor, what part about that makes you different from the next manager of the Wal-Mart, or from a future accountant for Peabody Coal?

So like I said, why would we want someone like you living in our town? In my native dialect, all middle class men are faggots, and bisexual women who drive dump trucks for their livings would tell you the same.

If I was to say that the Anarchist movement has been taken over by faggots, most Anarchists I’ve met would have three reactions.

First, they would tell me that their homosexuality was none of my business, or that they weren’t homosexuals, or that they were actually bisexuals, and in any case that I had no right to use that word. But you wouldn’t even notice that you were putting words in my mouth and trying to prove I meant what you felt I meant just so you could feel justified in being upset about it.

Second, you would tell me that faggot is a negative term for homosexuals and it isn’t even relevant to me. But limp wristed girly boys who act as if their emotional sensitivity gives them the right to exploit my labor is relevant to me, and that’s what I was trying to tell you. The Anarchist movement is being dominated by men who seem to think that manual labor should be someone else’s responsibility, just like the rest of society is dominated by men who think manual labor should be someone else’s responsibility. We can tell by the texture of your skin that you aren’t manual laborers, and we can tell by the way you hold tools as though they’re alien artifacts that you don’t know how to use them. And that means your revolution isn’t going to do the working class any good, because you’re trying to replace the economic system we already have with one exactly like it. Or as we say: It’s been taken over by faggots.

Third, you would tell me that I needed to get to know people and find a way of expressing myself that wouldn’t offend them. But what makes it my responsibility to get to know you? Why don’t you get to know me? What makes it my responsibility to learn to talk the way you talk? Why don’t you learn to talk the way I talk? You’re the one who said you wanted to have a working class revolution. I didn’t come to your Anarchist meetings because I wanted to learn how to be middle class.

So here are three more ways you’ve found to be just another bunch of rich people who assume that whatever you feel to be true must be right, and that anyone who disagrees with you must not be smart enough to know any better.

(And by the way, if you want to know what I think of homosexuals, the Rocky Horror Picture Show cast I helped set up in Phoenix area has been so successful that we’re the only Rocky cast in America that owns the theatre we perform in, which is also the only independently owned theatre in the Phoenix area. Come see us every Saturday night at 11:00 at Chandler Cinemas on the northwest corner of Arizona Ave and the Ray Rd.. http://www.chandlercinemas.com.)

If you middle class people are so radical in your opposition to borders, why don’t you tear down your middle class insulation from the world? Why don’t you figure out how to have meetings where the real working class people will be the ones in the majority for a change? Why don’t each of you leave your cell phones and your credit cards at home some day, take a bus into south Phoenix… or central Phoenix… or north Phoenix… all by yourselves, and make friends with three people of your approximate age and same gender. Then go back other days and hang out with each of them and their friends. You try being the ones in the minority for a change and see what happens.

If you don’t live in a threatening situation that you can’t get out of easily, surrounded by people who think they’re superior to you, you have no idea what it means to be a minority. We seem to you to have magical powers because we know important things about life for reasons that seem mysterious to you. If you want magical powers like ours, why are you so afraid of doing the things we did to get them? Why do you do so many things to hold onto your majority status?

Why do you middle class radicals cling to your class borders so desperately?

As I told the Mexican guy who thanked me for helping him, Americans can afford to be dumb because with our overwhelming economic power, we can force everyone else to suffer the effects of our mistakes. Rich people don’t have to go to the trouble of thinking of new ideas, as long as they can use their advantages in resources to eliminate everyone else’s ideas. (Which is why rich people aren’t the ones who start revolutions.) Although, I admitted, he’s probably seen a lot more of that than I have. He was surprised to hear me say that and agreed with me—although even at the teach-in he was hesitant to come out and say what he thought, and for that matter, seemed to have trouble explaining it in English. He said that Americans think the world works the way they want it to work, and they won’t listen to anyone who tries to tell them they’re wrong. Which was why he was so surprised by the idea of a White guy handing out free education to Mexican farmers who were trying to liberate themselves from U.S. imperialism.

Maybe some other people out there have been thinking about things like this too. Or maybe not. I’ve written 8 books so far about self-empowerment, self-education, and smashing systems of oppression. (If you want the really hard core one, order Planetary Biology, Neo-Anarchism, and the Political Future of the World. I didn’t post much of that one on my website cuz I’m trying to stay out of prison. Just be warned that I wrote it in my native dialect, not yours.)

I joined the working class revolution because I wanted to liberate myself from exploitation, not because I wanted to help validate middle class people’s insulation from the world. And I’m hardly the only working class Anarchist who’s saying that.